Almost all of us are used to 'neat' eating three times a day. Excluding the many snacks of course. But there are also people who consciously skip breakfast regularly or not. What is wisdom from a scientific point of view?
In 2004 , 1 the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment wrote that skipping breakfast could be expected to have an adverse effect on health. I could not find a reference for this claim in the document and a study publishedin 2014 2shows that "the belief in the thought that skipping breakfast leads to being overweight is stronger than the scientific evidence for it." The researchers describe that associations have been found between non-breakfast and overweight, but that a causal relationship has never been demonstrated. In other words, just like fire and the fire brigade, non-breakfast and overweight are related, but that does not mean that non-breakfast causes overweight, just as the fire brigade is not responsible for starting the fire. In fact, an intervention study published a few months later in the same journal showed no effect of whether or not breakfast on overweight or obesity.
To evaluate the health of our lifestyle, I always reason from an evolutionary point of view. After all, our genes have slowly adapted to our 'primal' environment during more than six million years of human evolution, and genetically we are therefore optimally adapted (read: the most healthy) in this primal environment. To begin with, let's name a few differences between then and now, which may or may have led to disruption of our health.
In the first place, our ancestors lived most of human evolution near the equator and, at a certain point, a few million years ago, had the controlled use of fire no artificial light. The day-night rhythm of our ancestors was therefore very different from ours. Around the equator, for example, the sun sets around six in the evening and rises again around six in the morning. Food mainly took place in (day) light and the period between the last meal of the evening and the first meal in the morning was therefore almost always more than 12 hours. More than 80% of Westerners eat within an hour of waking up and more than 50% eat or drink two hours before going to bed, according to an interesting review 4 about this subject. That means that the night of Lent in the Western world is considerably shorter than for our distant ancestors.
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| Intermittent Fasting - saying no to food at scheduled times |
Secondly, there was never a fridge in our original environment a few meters from our bed. So our distant ancestors did breakfast only after they had first collected or hunted their breakfast together. Our ancestors almost always moved on an empty stomach, while we know no better than to dive into the fridge before moving.
Thirdly, the food supply in the prehistoric times was also much more uncertain than today. So not only the fast time over the night was, on average, longer for our ancestors than for us, but also during the day there were fewer eating times and therefore longer fasting times between the different eating moments.
My Evolutionary Approach route is, however, only a theory that I use as the basis for my (question) statements. So let's see if there is scientific evidence to support my hypothesis that an irregular meal intake and longer fasting times may positively support our health.
In the first place, there are various physiological changes in our body that indicate a lifestyle of which fasting / fasting was an integral part. Think of the glycogen supply in our liver (90-110 grams; 400-450 kcal) and in our muscles (200-500 grams; 800-2000 kcal) that can very quickly provide large but limited amounts of energy and our fat tissue ( 12-20 kg; 48,000-80,000 kcal) which contains enough calories to survive for a long time.
Numerous studies also show that the pandemic of obesity goes hand in hand with the increase in the number of calories in our diet and the rise of motorized transport. These trends have led to obese people worldwide being advised to eat less and exercise more. With marginal result. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that all these people are still being advised to consume three meals a day.
Scientific evidence for the health of intermittent fasting
Various scientific studies 4,5 show that every form of energy restriction is healthy. Logically, in a society where almost everyone eats chronically too many calories. The healthy effects of fasting are reflected in our metabolism: we become more sensitive to insulin (the diabetes hormone) and leptin (the obesity hormone). These changes again have the effect of mobilizing our fatty tissue. The latter not only has the obvious advantage that you lose from it, but also the advantage that ketones are formed. Ketones are fat breakdown products that, like glucose, can act as a direct energy source.
Ketogenic diet
Ketones appear to be 'better' for us as an energy source in different areas than glucose. It is clear from examination 6 that ketones make us less anxious and have a positive effect on our memory. These consequences can be explained evolutionally well. In order to survive, it is of great importance that when you wake up in the morning to be able to function afterwards, you are not dependent on the fridge, but that you can function at a high level, both physically and mentally, and are therefore are to collect your 'breakfast' together or hunt before you actually die from the effects of hunger or thirst. If you are less anxious you are more likely to find enough food on your empty stomach. And a better memory could help you remember the next day where you found the easiest food the previous days. The neurons in our brain in particular appear to have a preference for ketones.
Intermittent fasting compared to other diets
If we compare different fasting regimes, intermittent fasting has more beneficial effects than daily energy restriction. For example, compared to intermittent fasting, a calorie-restricted diet had the same effect on weight reduction, but 4people intermittently fasting showed greater insulin sensitivity than people on an energy- restricted diet.
Pleiotropic effects of intermittent fasting
Cancer cells are very unable to cope with intermittent fasting, because these fast-dividing cells depend primarily on the breakdown of glycogen and therefore on glucose for their energy supply. Cancer cells, on the other hand, are barely able to use ketones as an energy source. Animal studies therefore show very consistently that intermittent fasting can inhibit the growth of tumors of various types of cancer (including brain tumors, breast and ovarian cancer) or even reduce the tumor size 7 .
Intermittent fasting also inhibits cancer in another way, namely by inhibiting chronic low grade inflammation. These silent inflammations also increase not only the risk of cancer, but also the risk of other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer's) and certain autoimmune diseases (such as rheumatoid arthritis). Obesity causes low grade inflammation, but intermittent fasting also reduces the inflammation factors in the blood, such as TNF, IL-1 and IL-6 independently of weight loss. In asthma patients, intermittent fasting reduced the symptoms of asthma and other autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus erythematosus and type 1 diabetes . 4,5 be favorably affected by intermittent fasting.
Finally, intermittent fasting encourages 4.5 clearing of damaged cells in our body. You could call it detoxing. As long as we continue to eat at the rhythm of the clock, our bodies remain in growth mode and enzymes involved in clearing damaged cells remain inactive. Intermittent fasting interrupts the growth mode and thus stimulates enzymes involved in autophagy: clearing damaged cells. Intermittent fasting, for example, by cleaning up harmful proteins such as Synuclein in Parkinson's and amyloid-β in Alzheimer's, inhibits the occurrence of neurodegenerative disorders.
Conclusion
The above scientific studies support the evolutionary hypothesis that intermittent fasting has benefits for our health. The metabolism in our body is set for fixed periods of 'build-up' (eating) and 'breakdown' (fasting) where the balance between eating and fasting in our current society seems to have become unbalanced by a much too high meal frequency, where there are there is insufficient time for repairing damaged cells and inhibiting inflammation, resulting in typical welfare diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune diseases.
In practice
Research shows that our body needs about four weeks to get used to an intermittent fast. Our body has become accustomed (or even addicted) to using glucose as a fuel. If we suddenly skip breakfast in the morning, our body initially tries to persuade us (with a feeling of hunger) to go for the easy breakfast (glucose), instead of using our supplies. Whoever manages to resist this feeling of hunger will initially burn his supply of glycogen (1200-2500 kcal). During the night we already burn about 500 kcal on average, so if you start to move sober in the morning (more about this in a subsequent blog), you soon run the risk of also burning the remaining 700-2000 kcal and then increasing the supply of energy in fat tissue. to speak. Although that is exactly what we want, unfortunately, ice is not going so smoothly overnight. That is because those who for the first time have solid (yet) insufficient enzymes that are able to quickly mobilize our fat tissue (to convert fat into ketones): we are (still) fully geared to glucose burning. To get enough energy from your fat tissue on an empty stomach, your body needs time to adjust the ratio between the various (glucose and fat-burning) enzymes. Only when our metabolism has been fully adjusted to this after a few weeks, you will not experience any feeling of hunger at all. You have then produced enough enzymes that are good at breaking down fat and making ketones and you have fewer enzymes crying out for glucose that made you feel hungry. And for those who had not yet made the link: that means that you are also rid of your (friend's / his / her) morning mood. So do it!
References:
- http://www.voedingscentrum.nl/Assets/Uploads/Documents/Ons%20eten%20gemeten.pdf (see Text block 1 on page 28 and paragraph 4 on page 269).
- https://timetoslim.xyz
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